DC Partners With Sasha Bruce for Missing Children

Police Will Start to Take Found Children to the House for Assessment First

By

Christine Rushton

DC has launched a new site for missing persons information at missing.dc.gov. (Photo: DC Government)

DC will start taking found missing children to the Sasha Bruce House in Northeast DC for assessment before returning them to their homes, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced in late May. The plan comes as a recommendation from the task force Bowser put together after confusion over the number of missing children in DC earlier this spring.

The City’s Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) will build up the program at Sasha Bruce with more staff and an evaluation standard.

DC has also launched a new website to help explain the processes and help residents understand what they can do when it comes to missing persons cases. The site missing.dc.gov shows a guide to who is considered a missing person, how the police classify the cases, what resources are available for runaways and also a list of the open and closed cases.

The site launched following the Metropolitan Police Department’s (MPD) change in policy around reporting active missing persons cases. MPD started emailing and alerting residents on social media when a “Critical” missing person’s case opened, which flooded the news and alarmed many. It also gave the impression of a massive uptick in the cases.

But DC’s new site clearly outlines how the numbers of missing persons cases reported has actually declined since 2015 from 2,433 youth and 1,423 adults to 2,241 youth and 1,302 adults in 2016. Year to date, DC has closed 1,395 of 1,444 total cases.